Literary Birthday – 26 December – David Sedaris

Writing gives you the illusion of control, and then you realise it’s just an illusion, that people are going to bring their own stuff into it.

I don’t write about sex because it’s not really my subject. I love it when other people write about it, but it’s not my subject, and I don’t want anyone I’ve had sex with to write about it. Plus, you’re in front of an audience, and they picture wherever you’re writing about. I’m 52; no one in the audience wants to picture that.

If you read somebody’s diary, you get what you deserve.

I haven’t got the slightest idea how to change people, but still I keep a long list of prospective candidates just in case I should ever figure it out.

But I don’t distinguish between being laughed with, and laughed at. I’ll take either.

I started writing when I was twenty, and my first book came out seventeen years later.

I preferred my villains to be evil and stay that way, to act like Dracula rather than Frankenstein’s monster, who ruined everything by handing that peasant girl a flower. He sort of made up for it by drowning her a few minutes later, but, still, you couldn’t look at him the same way again.

If you’re looking for sympathy you’ll find it between shit and syphilis in the dictionary.

I just looked at the pattern of my life, decided I didn’t like it, and changed.

David Sedaris is an American Grammy Award-nominated humorist, comedian, author, and radio contributor. His collections of stories and essays include Naked, Me Talk Pretty One Day, and Let’s Explore Diabetes With Owls.